The 2023 Fall Convention of the Arkansas Audubon Society will be held October 13-15 at beautiful Mount Sequoyah, 150 Skyline Dr. in Fayetteville. We’re excited to be offering some outstanding speakers and activities at this meeting! All meals and meetings will be held at Parker Hall.
A block of rooms has been reserved for us. Mount Sequoyah offers cottage rooms with free WiFi and TV and a private bath. Room rates are $95 per night. There is no tax. To make a reservation, call 479-443-4531 and indicate you are part of the Arkansas Audubon Society convention. Reserve your room with Mt. Sequoyah by September 13 to ensure your special AAS room rate.
Register for the convention at arbirds.org by September 13 to qualify for Early Bird registration rates: $20 for AAS members and $30 for non-members. Student registration is $10. Save money by registering early! Also, please note the cutoff date for registration with meals is one week before the meeting, October 6, 2023.
On Friday night Lynn Sciumbato will be our speaker. Lynn is a wildlife rehabilitator at the Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Gravette and she will be speaking on "Wild Bird Rehabilitation." Lynn will be joined by Igor, a turkey vulture, and an owl (identity TBD).
Saturday afternoon, Jack and Pam Stewart's symposium will offer speakers on the new West Fork ordinance permitting native plant gardens (the first such ordinance in Arkansas!). Symposium attendees will be eligible to win a substitute for a plastic product. For more information about symposium speakers, see the convention agenda.
AAS members Kelly and Donna Mulhollan of Still on the Hill will be performing "Words on Birds." Also, Donna’s needle felted birds, created in honor of Joe Neal, will be on display! A reception will follow.
Dr. Tim O’Connell, Associate Professor of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University, will be our Saturday night dinner speaker. His topic will be "Glass Casualties: Why Collisions Matter and Why I’m Confident We Can Reduce Them."
Taylor Long, our field trip coordinator, has assembled 12 field trips, including research field trips, a beginner’s field trip, a bird/insect/plant field trip, and the usual trips, culminating in a Sunday morning field trip led by Taylor at the Ninestone Land Trust in Berryville. Sites include Lake Fayetteville, Wilson Springs, Wooley Wet Prairie, Chesney Prairie, and Crystal Bridges Museum North Woods, to name a few.There’s more than one field trip for everyone at this convention!
We hope you can join us for an action-packed, educational, and enjoyable weekend!
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Lynn Sciumbato has operated Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Gravette, AR for 36 years, taking in and treating every type of wild bird from eagles to hummingbirds. She currently averages approximately 400 birds a year. She also taught Ecology and Biology at Rogers High for over 20 years.
Dr. Timothy O'Connell, Associate Professor of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University, works in the areas of habitat associations, human stressors, and ecological indicators using birds. He has designed and carried out wildlife inventory for more than 30 years; users of his Bird Community Index include the EPA and National Park Service. In Oklahoma, he has designed and managed field inventory for everything from Mountain Plovers in shortgrass prairie to Cerulean Warblers in oak-hickory forest, and has studied collision mortality of birds and bats. Additional collaborative work includes modeling bird distributions in response to weather extremes, mapping high-risk migration routes, and examining human motivations for trading in wildlife in Nigeria. Dr. O’Connell is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society and Past President of the Wilson Ornithological Society, now in its 134th year of publishing. Including Ornithology, Wildlife Management, and Applied Landscape Ecology, Dr. O’Connell has taught 9 undergraduate and 6 graduate courses in his career. He has published 42 peer-refereed journal articles and 52 technical reports, as well as other types of scholarship.